


you break it, you buy it

by darutias



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Anxiety, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Minor Injuries, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker is a Little Shit, Peter Parker is a Mess, Precious Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-11
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2020-05-01 16:41:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19181767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darutias/pseuds/darutias
Summary: School is hard enough for the average teen. Throw in fighting crime and some unresolved mental health issues, Peter's got it rough.or: peter is a work in progress. tony pretends he doesn't get paid enough for this, but at the root of it, he just wants the kid to be okay.





	you break it, you buy it

**Author's Note:**

> this was supposed to be something entirely different but it turned into something weird and fluffy and soft that... turned sort of angsty and sad, and ended on a happy note. this might turn into a series. peter has some unresolved mental health issues sorry i don't make the rules 
> 
> ANYWAY i love them all so much take this disaster 
> 
> tw for blood, burns, injury of the minor variety, and some anxiety talk

**peter** 3:13PM  
I’m in a sticky situation here :(

 **ned** 3:13PM  
are you literally caught in your own webs because if so i need video proof   
like  
now

 **peter** 3:14PM  
weblessinseattle.mp4

 **mj** 3:15PM  
for fuck’s sake, parker.

//

Texting—even with voice-to-text via Karen—is not the best idea right now. He _knows_.

And, yeah, he’s literally in a tight spot—he’s trapped in his own webs, having been slapped from the air by Villain of the Week™, and he’s running on three hours of sleep and six cans of Red Bull in the last two hours and counting, so his reflexes are 2.89 seconds off. He’s been counting. He’s _got_ this.

“ _Kid, on your left_ ,” Rhodey tells him over the comms, and Peter huffs, frantically trying to reach his dissolver, but the brick wall is doing a perfect rendition of a brick wall. “ _Hey, kid—you listening?”_

“Yeah, yeah,” he gets out, and he’s _so close_ to his dissolver trigger, and if Tony finds him like this, he’s never going to live it down. “Give me, like, two seconds. Three, maybe. Karen, got any ideas?”

“ _I can activate your dissolver for you,”_ she tells him, and—wow, okay, he’s had too much caffeine and not enough sleep, but he definitely aced the calculus midterm this morning, so priorities.

“Do that,” he mutters, and chaos is reigning in the distance, and he’s pretty sure Tony and Natasha are containing most of the damage two streets over, so he’s good over here. The important thing, Peter decides, is that it’s not _aliens_. Karen sets him free, and Peter’s sleep-deprived brain helpfully supplies him with Troy and Gabriella’s lovely duet in _High School Musical._

 _“Hey, kid,”_ Tony says, and he’s obviously amused, and Peter regrets recording any of this. It’s _stored_. Tony definitely, absolutely has proof of him webbed up to a wall, all for the sake of a pun to his best friends. “ _You untangled yet?”_

Peter sighs, and his limbs are stiff from the bruising contact with heavy brick, but he shakes it out. “Yeah, Mr. Stark. I’m good.”

“ _At least it kept you out of trouble.”_

“I was in the area,” Peter argues, slamming on his trigger to pull him up towards the roof, and his head spins with a whirlwind of the city. Too many Red Bulls. Not enough sleep. Awesome midterm mark, though. _Worth it_. “Besides—”

“ _Web it, Spider-Kid.”_ Tony grunts over the comms, something explodes, but no one is screaming, and Peter can’t hear anyone combusting, so things could be worse. He’s nearby. “ _I know you’re skipping practice for this. I’m sure May’ll love to hear about that.”_

Peter rolls his eyes, which isn’t all that effective under his mask, and valiantly ignores the swoop in his stomach as he double-grips a streetlight to plunge himself towards the ground. “Mr. Stark, you can’t threaten me with May every time. She’s catching on.”

“ _Consider: May and Pepper.”_

Rhodey whistles over the comms, and Peter nearly misses his landing, but he manages to stick it anyway as Rhodey says, “ _Damn, Tones. That’s low.”_

Natasha is the one who greets him, a gash on her forehead sluggishly bleeding and her shoulder swelling even under her suit, and Peter mutes his comms before asking, “Ms. Rom—Nat, are you okay?”

“Just a flesh wound, kid,” she says gently, and she’s probably lying, but Peter doesn’t call her on it. “You hit that wall hard. You good?”

He groans, crouching low to the ground, and his legs are kind of on fire, and the muscles in his back are going to be feeling those bricks for a good, long while, but: “Yeah, no, I’m good. I like to believe I’m stronger than some dumb wall.”

Natasha laughs, gripping his shoulder gently, and he’s relieved to find _that_ doesn’t hurt. “We all have proof of that now. Go, we’ve got clean-up covered here.”

“I’ve got practice covered,” he counters, and Natasha quirks a brow at him, and Peter jumps back up, rubbing his hands together. Okay, the caffeine is starting to work its way through his system, and he’s barrelling on through the last twenty or so minutes of energy—has to make it count. “Let me help.”

“ _Kid, unmute your comms,”_ Tony warns, and Peter realizes he’s been muting them both ways, so that’s awkward. “ _You’re a walking disaster today. What’s going on?”_

Peter throws his hands up, a decidedly dramatic gesture in the grand scheme of things, and declares, “ _Hello_ , I had a midterm this morning, so I’m a little on edge. It’s good! We’re good. I’m fine. I _aced_ it.”

There’s a moment of silence from both Tony and Rhodey, and Natasha is looking at him a little strangely, and Peter isn’t sure what he’s given away until Tony sighs so deeply over the comms that Peter feels it straight down to his bones.

 _“Alright, Pete,”_ he drawls, and the Iron Man thrusters are suddenly a lot closer. _“How much caffeine did you consume in the last twenty-four hours?”_

“That’s confidential,” he mutters, and Tony lands beside Natasha, and Peter knows exactly where he shoved his backpack, so he could totally make it back to practice in time. Tony steps out of the suit, and the streets aren’t that destroyed—which is probably a record for them—and Natasha gives him a _look_ , one that tells Peter he’s on his own.

“Yeah, no,” Tony says, folding his arms across his chest, and there’s some bruising forming over his left cheek. All things considered, Peter came out of this pretty good, so they can’t lecture him on _that_. “You’re a minor. Nothing gets to be confidential with you.”

Peter sniffs, and decides, in this moment, that Decathlon practice is much, much more important.

“Listen, I gotta go,” he tries, pressing on his trigger. He’s aiming for the building behind Tony and Natasha, and he’ll deal with the fallout later. “Um, promised MJ and Ned that I’d—uh, help with—”

“Kid, don’t you dare,” Tony mutters, and Natasha is coughing into her fist, and Peter swings himself up with a single strand of web, and the breeze does a nice job of clearing his head—

Until it snaps, and he’s already in the air, and Karen tells him, “ _Peter, the dissolver is in your cannister. It was damaged in the last fight.”_

“What,” he manages, because his brain is a little fuzzy around the edges, and two people are screaming at him in his comms. “How— _Karen_ —”

If he hits the ground, it’s going to hurt a lot worse than the wall, and watching that footage won’t be nearly as funny as him caught in his own webs on a wall, and he should tell Tony not to show this footage to Ned and MJ, because that might traumatize them. That won’t end well.

He doesn’t hit the ground, because something large and silver catches him, and Peter is slow on the uptake, but Rhodey says into the comms, “ _Tony,_ what _is wrong with him?”_

His feet are placed on the ground, which doesn’t jolt as much as he’s expecting, and Peter scrubs at the mask over his face; the mask, which he can’t take off, and someone is taking it off _anyway_ , and Peter tries to shoo the hands away but they’re pretty insistent.

“Peter,” Tony snaps, which catches his attention, because there’s worry in his voice and Peter tastes fresh air and it feels really, really nice. “Yeah, there we go. Jesus, kid. Did you sleep last night?”

“Yes,” Peter answers, a little too quickly, because all three of them are giving him unimpressed looks. “Okay, I _did_ , just… between the hours of three to six. So.”

“That explains why you seemed to have forgotten you can _walk on walls_ ,” Rhodey points out, and Peter blinks at him, but all he sees is the War Machine mask, and it’s hard to take him seriously. War Machine is intimidating, but Rhodey is awesome, and Peter almost tells him this. “I’m not in the business of scraping up spider-pancakes off streets.”

“Morbid,” Natasha offers, and Peter snorts, a hysterical laugh bubbling in his throat, and the crash is _definitely_ catching up with him. He has two more midterms this week.

Tony just waves them both off, out of the suit, and Peter can only hope that no one is around to watch them because he’s exposed without his mask, and even with the three of them shielding him, it’s still— _odd_.

“We’re getting you home, and you’re going to bed,” Tony says firmly, and Peter can’t help it: he _laughs_. “Glad you find that funny. Maybe you can laugh yourself to sleep.”

Peter will come to regret this, as he does many, many things, but in this moment, a caffeine-crash so bad, his head spins with it, he manages: “You—you sound like a _dad_.”

Natasha clears her throat, Rhodey howls, and Tony pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. Peter has an inexplicable craving for pancakes.

//

Tony drops him off at home, and Peter nearly falls asleep in the front seat, lulled by the sounds of Tony sipping at a cup of coffee from McDonald’s, of all places.

“Bed,” Tony tells him, and Peter yawns so wide, his jaw cracks unpleasantly. “This isn’t my job. Telling you to sleep is _not_ my job. Why do you make me do these things?”

Peter, having stolen one of Tony’s MIT sweaters during the detour before arriving here, wipes at his face with his sleeve and attempts to stifle another yawn. His eyes are twice as heavy as the rest of his body, and the only consolation is that Tony had bought him two chicken nugget Happy Meals from McDonald’s to cheer him up about the Webbed to the Wall™ incident.

“I don’t make you do anything,” Peter mumbles, palming at his eyes, and all he sees is grey. Sweater-grey. The sweater, which is Tony’s, which is _so fucking soft_. “’Sides, I have a chem midterm in two days. I gotta cram.”

“Pretty sure Fred told me you’re setting the curve,” Tony says, and Peter can almost hear a gentleness to it, but he’s also sleep-deprived, so. “You’re gonna burn yourself out, kid.”

He shrugs, resting his head against the window, and the glass is cool against his cheek; turns out, he’s bruising too, and that’s going to be fun to explain to May. “Ned. His dog is Fred.”

A beat of silence. “Ted has a dog?”

“Fred is a dog, yes,” Peter confirms, nodding slowly, and he debates stealing Tony’s coffee. McDonald’s coffee tastes like sludge and dirt and something vaguely plastic, but it’s coffee, and May has definitely cut off his supply for the night. “Ned is Ned. The human.”

Tony hums, and a hand ruffles his hair, and it feels really, really nice, and Peter figures a minute or two of his eyes being closed isn’t such a bad thing; besides, if he manages to catch five minutes of shut-eye in Tony’s car, then he has hours to kill cramming, and he’ll ace _that_ midterm.

“Pete.” His shoulder is being agitated, and that’s annoying, so he swats at it. It’s caught midair, which—okay, not cool, and that has him opening his eyes to see Tony raising a curious eyebrow at him. “Yeah, hi. Glad you caught some z’s. Come on, I’m taking you up to your room.”

Too many words. Peter groans, says, “Wh’r’s ‘at?”

“Tower,” Tony supplies, and Peter blinks more of the gunk out of his eyes as that registers. “Got permission from your aunt. You’re sleeping over, kiddo.”

If he’s—oh. He must have fallen asleep, and the drive is at least twenty-five minutes, even with good traffic, and Peter groans as he stretches out his neck, his cheek aching from prolonged contact on the window; his whole body is just _sore_ at this point, and his head is aching something fierce.

“I need to study,” he mumbles, and his hands aren’t that steady when he fumbles with the seatbelt clip. Tony helps him out, unbuckling him, and he _needs_ coffee. “Hey, you can like… mass order—”

“Stopping you right there.” Tony unbuckles himself, slips out of the car, and Peter watches him through bleary eyes as he circles the car to open Peter’s door, too. “This is why May lets me kidnap you. You’re a danger to yourself. You know that? You’re—Jesus, you’re me. You’re a tinier me. That’s not a compliment.”

Peter sniffs, his nose cold despite the humidity in the air, and Tony rolls his eyes before helping Peter out of the car; Tony is warm, and when Peter’s feet hit the ground, it’s agony that crawls up his legs, and he hisses through his teeth.

“Shit, what—”

“Wall,” Peter mutters, resting his weight against Tony, and maybe sleep isn’t such a bad idea. “Smoosh. Brick wall. Like… Commodores. _Brick House_.”

Tony holds him steady, and Peter evens out his breathing until it doesn’t hurt to walk on his ankles, and: “Kid, that—that song doesn’t apply to this. At all.”

They head towards the door, and Peter says tiredly, “Okay, _Another Brick in the Wall_.”

“Classic.” Tony nods, and he adjusts, arm coming to rest around Peter’s shoulders, and Peter stifles another yawn in the sleeve of his sweater. “That I can get behind, but you better not be giving up your education, kiddo.”

Peter buries his head against Tony’s collarbone, and he’s warm and smells like cologne and the rubble of the streets, and he doesn’t care because hey, they’re alive, and that’s good. “Nah. You’re th’one… tryin’ stop me fr’m studyin’…”

“Why are you so… _snuggly_ when sleep-deprived?” Tony mutters, and Peter just shrugs awkwardly, and he thinks, maybe, he’s falling asleep, but that’s okay, too.

//

See, his bed is soft, because Tony put care into making his room _nice_ , but when he jerks awake at 1:43AM, the only thing Peter can think about is: _I gotta study._

And it’s ridiculous, he knows that, because he knows the material like the back of his hand, like the inside of his suit and every code within it, but—if he falls behind, he loses a part of himself, and that’s a visceral fear, especially as of late. It’s easy to chalk it up to the stress of exams coming up in a month, but Peter’s been working harder, staying out later, and his body is paying the price.

It's 1:45AM, and Peter climbs out of bed, still in his jeans and the MIT sweater, and fishes around for his backpack.

“Of course it’s not here,” he says to no one, and the room answers back in kind. Friday doesn’t even offer an explanation, and Peter drags his hand through his hair. He has his phone, which means he can study through his own memory, so that’s—that’ll be enough.

First: coffee, because he won’t touch Tony’s energy drinks, and he’s not risking the lab.

That leaves the kitchen.

//

Friday doesn’t alert him of anything, and she doesn’t talk to him, and he’s not sure if he should be worried or not; either Tony is asleep, or so absorbed in whatever he’s doing that Peter can get away with—well, anything. Maybe.

Either way, there’s a half-pot of coffee that’s already made, and his hands are shaking when he rolls up his sleeves over his elbows and pours himself a cup, shoving it in the microwave. He’s not a huge fan of the taste—it’s bitter and burnt and honestly, it just sort of tastes like adulthood—but it’ll do the trick. Three hours of studying, a few of sleep, and he’ll be fine; once midterms are over, he can get himself back on track.

The microwave dings, and Peter’s leaning on the counter, chin in the palm of his hand, and it startles him so bad, he slips. The shock of it outweighs the pain, but he can taste blood between his teeth, over the curve of his lip, so that’s—that’s fantastic. That’s great.

“Ow…” he groans, tonguing at the split in his bottom lip. Not deep, and it’ll heal by tomorrow night, but it stings. He breathes out a sigh and grabs the coffee from the microwave, debating sweetener, before shrugging and detouring for the sink, spitting out blood and spit and washing it down the drain. The coffee is too hot, but he takes a sip anyway, and it burns his tongue, and he definitely deserves it, but—

“The fuck, kid,” Tony grumbles, leaning against the archway, and Peter jumps, the mug slipping from his hands and splashing coffee onto his arm. Hot, freshly microwaved coffee. He curses, and the mug shatters on the ground, and Tony swears before rushing forward, but Peter takes a step without thinking and _that’s_ a mistake, too.

“Oh my _God_ ,” he whispers, and there’s a burn forming on his arm, and his lip is bleeding, and now his _foot_ is bleeding, and he can’t _win_. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—the mug—”

Tony grabs his reddening arm, the skin of his wrist already blistering and turning an angry, harsh red, and turns the tap to cool, shoving Peter’s arm under as he says, “Forget about the damn mug. Your lip—what happened?”

“I, uh… slipped,” he admits, and his lip is definitely swelling. “When… making coffee.”

The look Tony gives him is one torn between disbelief and irritation, and Peter just wanted some caffeine and to study some goddamn formulas, not—not _this_ , and his arm really, really fucking hurts, and he’s still sore from the wall incident. The night isn’t kind to him.

“And _why_ , pray tell, were you making coffee at—” He checks his watch, and Peter tries not to look at his own arm, but the blisters are definitely forming quick, and his body is _trying_ , but he knows that he’s making it harder on basis of existing on a few hours of sleep. “Kid, it’s almost two in the goddamn morning.”

“I need to study,” he says lamely, and Tony pinches the bridge of his nose with his hand that isn’t occupied. “You don’t—”

“Don’t feed me the bullshit about how I don’t understand,” Tony snaps, and Peter’s teeth click together, an audible cracking of his jaw. “When I said you were a tinier me? Wasn’t kidding. This is Grade A Tony Stark shit right here, kid. Not a good thing. This is bordering self-sabotage.”

Peter’s arm isn’t going numb, and it’s probably because of his healing factor, and it _hurts_. Instead, he says, “I just… the midterms are almost over.”

“Yeah?” Tony nods to shards of porcelain on the floor, the blood pooling around Peter’s foot. “Is this gonna be the cost of every exam? Blood for a grade? C’mon, Peter. You’re not stupid.”

There’s something inherently shattering about getting this side of Tony, and Peter exhales shakily, blinking back the swell of tears that wants to escape—not here, not now.

“I don’t know how to explain it,” he says quietly, and Tony flips the tap off, heaving a sigh. “I just… I dunno. I’m sorry.”

Peter is expecting a lecture, maybe, or to be told to sit so they can deal with the hazardous waste on the floor; what he’s not expecting is for Tony to pull him into a half-hug, Tony careful not to jostle the burn on his arm, as he says, “You gotta take care of yourself, kid.”

“I’m tired,” he admits, and Tony’s wearing sweats and a pajama shirt, which means he definitely woke up to deal with Peter, and he rests his head on Tony’s shoulder. “Just… tired, Mr. Stark.”

“Yeah.” Tony gives his shoulder a quick squeeze, and Peter is overwhelmed with sixteen different focal points of pain on his body. “Let’s fix that.”

//

Tony wraps up his arm—which stings something awful—and deals with his foot, and there’s not much they can do for his lip, so they leave it.

The kitchen is dealt with while Peter changes into pajama pants and climbs into bed, though guilt still sneaks up on him, and he knows it’s a dangerous path, but it’s—it’s _his_ , this thing, and Peter groans into his hands as Tony knocks his way into the room. Nothing ever stops. That’s the root of it, really. Nothing _stops._

“Gotta talk to me,” Tony says quietly, taking a seat on the edge of the bed, and Peter shrugs. “Something tells me your spiral of destruction for studying isn’t the same as mine was.”

He doesn’t know how to explain the synapses being a constant fire, a fear that they _won’t_ , and he drums his fingers on his knee, chews the inside of his lip. Tries to find the words, because Tony woke up at two in the morning to deal with him, and Peter—Peter doesn’t even _like_ coffee, not really, prefers iced coffee with pumps of vanilla from that café MJ introduced them to.

“It used to be all I have,” he mutters, and he can count every microfiber in the blanket if he wanted to. He doesn’t. “Before… before all this, you know? I had May and—and Ben, and I had school, and I’m on a scholarship, right? And my grades dropped, when this first started, and I thought—that’s okay, because I’m doing something _good_ , something _better_ , but it didn’t work out that way.”

Tony is looking at him strangely, contemplatively, and Peter doesn’t meet his eyes, stares at the thread that’s winding around his thumb as he picks it out of the sheet. “And, you know, I gotta work out that balance now. And I _am_. But I can’t do that to May again, can’t… fall behind, because the one thing Ben was always, _always_ proud of, Mr. Stark, was how hard I tried, and then I stopped, and now I have more I have to work at, and I just—I can’t _stop_.”

The familiar curl of panic, thick where it swells in the spaces of his lungs, takes over his breathing as he manages, “Nothing _stops_ , Mr. Stark.”

“Pete,” Tony says quietly, and Peter is hollowed out, like a confession, and it’s fucking _awful_. “You talk to anyone about this shit?”

“Yeah,” he admits, which isn’t technically a lie, because: “You, right now, so.”

Tony sighs, and Peter doesn’t like being vulnerable, either, and Tony scrubs a hand down his face and stares at the floor. Maybe he’s admitted too much, because being this sort of—of _exposed_ , a raw nerve, is a lot easier when he’s in his suit. Having a gun pointed at him is easier. That’s… that’s weird, and a little sad, he figures, but it’s late and he hasn’t slept and his arm is literally burning with pain, so.

“I’m not a therapist,” Tony says suddenly, clasping his hands together over his knees, and Peter blinks, his thumb going numb where the thread is begging for release. “Disclaimer. But, shit, kid. This is anxiety-level thinking, here. This is—God, alright, I feel like I’m entering hypocritical territory here, but you can’t bury this kinda stuff and hope it goes away.”

Peter shrugs, because an exposed nerve is much, much more painful when it’s prodded at, and mutters, “I can try.”

“Hm, yeah, you can,” Tony agrees, eyebrow cocked, and Peter already knows where this is going because Tony nods at his bandaged arm. “And that’s how you end up with a coffee-burn, a split lip, and a piece of one my favorite generic mugs shoved into the heel of your foot.”

“I _am_ sorry about your mug,” Peter tells him, because his senses should have picked up on Tony coming for him, or on the fact that he wasn’t alone, but it did neither. “I don’t know why it spooked me so bad, but I… probably fix it, maybe—”

Tony waves his hand, a gesture of dismissal, and says, “I’m kidding, Pete. Pretty sure that mug came in a set of fifty.”

“Who needs fifty mugs?” he asks, horrified, and Tony palms at his forehead. “No, I need to know for science, because I know you have a lot of cupboard space, but—”

“Stay on track here, kid,” Tony says, not unkindly, and Peter gives a half-hearted shrug. “I’ll answer all your mug-related questions tomorrow. Right now, I’m going to give you some options, and you can mull them over while you get some shut-eye before school, yeah?”

And, yeah, the nerve is still exposed—he thinks, maybe, it always will be—but Tony is genuine, and the serpentine panic that’s been taking up home within the expanse of his chest isn’t so demanding anymore, isn’t coalescing into an all-consuming panic where _he can’t breathe_.

“Yeah,” he mutters, untying the thread, and blood rushes through his finger again. “Okay.”

//

(These are his options: he can tell May his thought process, or Tony will, or they can tell her together, but she needs to know. He decides he’ll tell May on his own, he just needs a bit of time, because Peter has already put her through so much and this is—this is new territory for him, too.

Not an option: he needs help, and Tony can give it to him in a form of professionality, and Peter doesn’t want to, but the burn on his arm is violent and struggling to heal, and his sleep-deprivation is getting out of hand, and Tony won’t let him go down the same path as him.

“Progress is progress,” Tony tells him, the day after the incident, driving him to school. “We’ll figure it out.”

Peter believes him.)

**Author's Note:**

> come yell @ me: [tumblr](https://sumpetals.tumblr.com) ♥


End file.
